He finished but stayed put, looking at me. I poured him another bowl.
Wait, I reminded myself. Wait. It was up to him.
Sam called that morning.
“Want to go to the amusement park? We’re supposed to have bad weather, so maybe the lines will be short. We can wait out the storms at the carousel if they happen.”
“Sure.”
“Morgan’s coming, too.”
“Okay.”
“We’ll come get you in half an hour.”
I dressed, got some money from Dad, and waited by the front porch.
Sam’s dad drove us there and said he would come back for us at six p.m. That gave us loads of time—probably enough to go on every ride, because it wasn’t the biggest amusement park. But it had a couple of roller coasters and it looked pretty fun.
Morgan and Sam both seemed to like roller coasters the way I do. You always have to sit in pairs, so I was worried about who should sit with who, but Sam was a born diplomat. He alternated sitting with each of us and then saying he wanted the seat to himself, making us sit together. Morgan seemed fine with the whole thing.
One ride was nauseating to watch. The riders stood up and held on to some vertical handles, and then the ride flipped them upside down and twisted them around in every direction at random.
“Cool!” Sam yelled.
Morgan and I looked at each other as Sam ran to get in line. “We’re getting ice cream!” Morgan called after him. “Come on,” she said to me. She got strawberry and I got coffee.
“It feels cooler now that I’m eating ice cream,” I said.
“No way. It’s blazing hot.”
The thunderstorms hadn’t come through yet. We headed back over to the crazy ride. Sam was still in line. We waved to him and then found a bench across the sidewalk so we could watch.
“I’m probably going to be sick just watching that thing,” I said, slowing down my ice cream eating.
“Sam can be crazy,” Morgan said. “But he says you’re a crazy one, too.”
My cheeks burned pink. “He said that? What did he say?”
“He said you talk to ghosts or something. Do you? You talk to ghosts?”
I shook my head. “Not really.” There. Choose the vaguest words possible. Don’t give a solid answer to anything. That’s safest.
“Sam has the nuttiest ideas sometimes. That’s too bad, though. I would have wanted to see that.”
If she thought Sam’s ideas were nutty, she wasn’t likely to take any of the things he’d told her too seriously. Not that it didn’t sting to know he’d been blabbing about something so private. I kept my cool, which wasn’t too hard with the ice cream. “What, like have a séance?”
Morgan shrugged. “I don’t know. It would be fun, like for Halloween. We could still do it. Get a lot of kids going.”
“Does Sam really think I’m crazy?”
Morgan got a sly look. “Maybe. But I also know he thinks you’re awesome. He doesn’t shut up about you.”
“Is that … okay with you?”
“Yeah, whatever!” She smiled.
“You mean you’re not boyfriend and girlfriend?”
“No!” Morgan started laughing. “Sam’s like my brother. We’ve been playing in the mud at the beach together since before we could walk.”
“But even if he’s just your friend … you don’t mind … if he … or if I …?”
Morgan shook her head. She gave her cone a good chomp. When she was done chewing, she said, “I have a boyfriend, anyway. I haven’t told Sam.”
“Really? Why not?”
“Just easier. And he’s been spending a lot of time with you, so he hasn’t noticed I’ve been around less. For now, it’s perfect until I want to tell him.”
“Someone from school?”
“High school. He’s a sophomore.”
“Morgan!”
She grinned as she finished her ice cream cone.
Sam was leaving the ride. I hadn’t even noticed that he’d had his turn. Just as I realized ice cream was running down my wrist like I was four years old, I noticed that Sam looked rather green. He stopped and bent over. Uh-oh.
“I got this.” Morgan hopped up, ran over to him, and got him to sit down with his head between his knees. Soon Sam was looking a little better.
I realized that Morgan had just given me a secret to hold. Sarah’s words drifted into my brain: Ooh, a secret. Those special words that give you a tiny piece of someone else to carry around, to prove you know something important about them.
I knew then that Sam wasn’t my only friend up here. Even if I could talk to ghosts. Or whatever.
24
On Saturday, Mom and Dad thought the air was a good temperature for painting, so they were on ladders working on the outside of the house. I didn’t like them up on ladders; I kept picturing them toppling and ending up paralyzed.
No sense staying home all day feeling nervous.
I found Lucca parked in his red and yellow Little Tikes car.
“Come on, kid, let’s go to the park.”
It was a bit of a walk, but Lucca only had to do some of it, because I gave him piggybacks off and on.
Nobody was at the playground. That was nice. I sat on a bench and Lucca ran around and climbed on things. Then he went over to the swings and needed help hopping onto a seat. I gave him a boost and started pushing him.
My mind kept wandering out toward the ocean. You could see it from here, too. From everywhere, it felt like.
The ocean. Now, that was something that kept going no matter how hard life got. And if I thought about it from standing right here, there seemed to be no end to it. On and on and on, no matter what happened.
“Higher!”
“Sorry,” I said, remembering to give him a gentle shove.
“Higher!” He added, “Please.”
Then I realized.
I ran around to the front of the swing and caught him. I hugged him and hugged him and hugged him.
“What?” Lucca didn’t like this interruption. Who cared? I gave him a big kiss on the cheek. Then I calmed down. Didn’t want to scare him. Didn’t want to make too big a deal out of it and have him change his mind.
I went back to pushing him on the swing. I pushed him high, as he had asked, my arms never getting tired.
He was quiet.
But that was okay. It was something. It was a start.
When we got back to the house, I found Mom in the kitchen. She was eating strawberry yogurt right out of the big container with a huge spoon.
“You would never know that painting is so, so tiring.” She leaned against the counter. “I’m beat.”
“Too beat to even get a bowl?”
Lucca had followed me into the kitchen. “Go potty,” I told him. He ran off to the bathroom.
Then I looked Mom right in the eyes.
“What?” she asked. “You going to get on my case about the bowl?”
“He said something!” I whispered.
Mom looked at me. She let the spoon fall into the yogurt. “No.”
“He did! At the park! He said ‘Higher,’ for me to push him higher, on the swing. And he said ‘Please.’ ”
Mom continued to stare into my eyes, to see if I was pulling her leg. Then she set the yogurt down and started crying.
“Are you sure?”
Hmm. I have been prone to visions and hallucinations.…
“Yes. Yes, I’m sure.”
“I’ll let your dad know—unless you want to, you’re the one who heard him.”
“You can tell him.”
She squeezed my shoulders and gave me a little shake before she ran out of the room. I hoped she didn’t knock Dad off a ladder or anything.
It was not instant, the change in Lucca. It wasn’t like he would talk all the time. Mom and Dad waited, and I waited, for it to happen again.
Not another peep for about a week. Then one night Lucca seemed to think he was done eating, but h
e hadn’t touched his peas at all. Usually he eats his peas. I even think they are one of his favorite things. But he wouldn’t touch them and started to get pouty.
“Eat your peas,” Mom said absentmindedly.
“No,” said Lucca.
We all looked at him.
“No,” Lucca said. “They are too squishy.”
Mom and Dad leapt out of their chairs, jumped up and down, and ran to hug him.
Lucca looked embarrassed. He caught my eye as if to ask, What’s all the fuss about?
The next afternoon, Lucca and I waited for Sam on the porch. When he appeared in the yard and came up the steps, he said, “Hey, Siena. Hey, Lucca.”
I waited, smiling. Maybe Lucca would say something. It had been really, really hard to keep Lucca’s talking a big secret from Sam. But I wanted Lucca to tell him himself, when he was ready.
“Hey, Sam!” Lucca shouted.
Sam looked stunned. But he collected himself, as if this wasn’t a big deal at all—a totally different response from everyone in my family, and one Lucca needed, I bet. He said, “Hey, pal. Let’s go get out that train set.”
And Lucca ran off into the house.
Sam and I smiled at each other for a minute. I reached up and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“No problem,” he said. “See you after train time?”
I decided that—for once—I felt like brushing my hair and my teeth before dinner. And I checked that my clothes were clean and that they didn’t look stretched out from wearing them all day. I tried on the lip gloss again. Then, when playtime was ending, I bounded down the stairs. Perfect: Sam was just setting all the “crashed” trains back on the tracks.
“There’s time to go outside before dinner,” I said.
“Okay. Look, we did a sock swap.” Sam held out his foot. There was a tiny green-striped sock that barely squeezed onto his toes. I looked at Lucca, who had a much-too-big black sock bunched around his ankle.
“We traded socks!” Lucca explained.
“That’s great,” I laughed.
“See ya later, bud,” Sam said to Lucca, who waved goodbye.
After we got off the porch, I said, “You can give me his sock back. I’ll sneak it into the wash and he won’t know.”
“Nah, a promise is a promise. I’ll just keep it in my pocket for now.”
The little green sock disappeared into his pocket. A warm feeling rose in my chest. Thank you, Sam. Thank you for caring so much about my brother.
25
That night, I went to my room, unbelievably happy.
My thoughts went to Sarah. I hadn’t tried to enter her story with the pen since I’d gone inside her without it. But I needed to see, to know, how it worked out for her. For one last time, I got out the pen.
I sat in the living room, flipping through one of Mama’s magazines. There were a lot of neat craft projects I wanted to try. Maybe Mama would do them with me. She’d had time to spend with me lately.
She seemed to be doing a lot better. We all were.
I was still looking at the magazine when Jezzie arrived.
“Hello, Jezzie.” I hadn’t looked up, but I knew she’d jumped about a mile. I hadn’t spoken to her in more than a year.
“Did I scare you?” I tossed the magazine onto the sofa as I stood up.
“No,” she said, a little shaky. “How—how is Joshua today?”
“Not that you really care. You should go home. And not come back.”
I walked her to the door.
“But—but—”
I gave her a look. “I mean it. Never come back here.”
“But what about when my parents are coming … like at Christmas?”
“You’ll have a cold. A really awful cold. And a stomachache.”
“You want me to pretend to be sick any time my family is going to come here?”
“Oh, you won’t pretend. When you think about coming here, your stomach will get all churny and your head will get all hot. Just because I say so. Just like you decided I wouldn’t talk because you didn’t want me to.”
Jezzie looked angry. “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere I’m not welcome.” She looked back at me from the bottom porch step. “How did you come to talk again?”
“Joshua asked me to.”
I shut the door and went back to my magazine.
Joshua joined me on the couch. He moved slowly these days; we learned that he had been very sick with a high fever that made strange things happen in his brain. It took him a long time to even recognize us, to remember our life together. But he made sure to spend time with me every day; sometimes we talked and sometimes we just played checkers.
“What are you looking at?” he asked.
“Mama’s sewing magazine. Do you like these?” I showed him a picture. “Little sachets with potpourri in them. You put them in your bureau to make your clothes smell nice.”
“You can make them for everyone at Christmas. Then everyone will smell good.”
He had a book to read. “What’s that?” I asked.
“A book about medicine. I think I might want to study that, medicine.”
“To be a doctor?”
“Sure. To help people.”
“Won’t you have to go away again? I don’t want you to go away again.”
“Not the same way. I would just go to a university. Nearby.”
I considered. “That might be all right.”
“And not for a while. My own doctors won’t let me go anywhere until I’m strong enough.”
“Good.” I leaned against him as he started to read. “I’m glad you came back.”
I slept very late and woke to find a beautiful morning: sky clear and blue, leaves bright and green, water sparkling.
I thought about going to Mrs. Lang’s, to ask her again what her friend had said about the people who lived in my house. Would she have something different to say now?
Then I realized: I had something myself—I had Sarah’s report card!
I got it from the shelves with my collection. I turned it over to look at the teacher’s comments.
The writing had changed!
Most of it was just about her academics now, but the very first sentence stood out: Sarah is a lively member of our class, and she makes friends easily. None of the sections mentioned her not speaking at all!
It had been real, my intervention, as real as what this report card had shown before. I had changed something. Something that mattered.
I went downstairs for breakfast to find Mom and Dad at the table surrounded by flyers and pamphlets.
“What are these?” I asked.
“Preschools.”
Aw! It was finally time for Lucca to go to school!
I picked up a pamphlet. Cheerful toddlers using bright, primary-color paint. I figured they were staged, because when little kids paint, the colors don’t stay separate for very long.
“His sentence structure is well beyond his age,” Mom said. “Maybe we should be looking into full-time school rather than a couple days a week. He’ll be four before school starts.”
“Maybe,” Dad agreed. “We could have him tested again, see how it goes now that he talks.”
“No!” I burst out.
Both of my parents stared at me.
“I …” I couldn’t think of exactly how to explain. “Just let him be four.”
They kept staring at me for a minute. Mom looked like she was about to be outraged, but Dad exchanged a calming look with her and kicked out a chair for me.
“Come help us look,” he invited. “What you think is important, too.”
I looked through the pamphlets with them. “This one sounds good.” I held up a flyer. About twenty kids and held in a church basement; every day they had story time and music and, outside, playground time and nature walks. I could picture Lucca there, with other little kids, having fun. In fact, I saw it so clearly, I would say it was the first time I
saw the future. “This one sounds right.”
Later, Sam arrived at the front door.
“Get Lucca,” he suggested.
I gave Sam a hug. Then I yelled down the hallway, “Lucca! Come on! We’re going out!”
First we wandered through the wooded area on the ridges above the water, farther than I had been before. Sam and I took turns giving Lucca piggybacks. During one of his turns, Sam went running along the path, charging ahead, Lucca screaming with laughter as he was jostled up and down.
Then I remembered something.
“Hey, can we make a stop?”
I led the way back past our house and on to Mrs. Lang’s.
“There you are!” she cried when she opened the door. “And Lucca, and …”
“Sam,” all three of us finished.
“Are you …?” Mrs. Lang studied Sam carefully. “Of Nielly’s?”
“Yep!” said Sam.
“Oh, I know Sam Nielly. Who doesn’t? Come in, come in!”
We followed her in.
“You know, I was making a big pasta salad to eat all week, but now that you’ve shown up, I think a meal with company might be nicer. Would you like some?”
We said yes and sat at the kitchen table. She served four bowls of pasta.
“Looks good!” Sam said.
“It does, Mrs. Lang,” I agreed.
“Tastes good, too.” Sam had already dug into his.
“Look,” said Lucca. “I see peas, broccoli, and cheese.”
“Are you going to eat the peas?” I asked.
“Today they are the yummiest.” And Lucca happily popped a couple into his mouth with his fingers.
“I told you,” Mrs. Lang said softly. “All in good time, right?”
“Right.” Then I remembered why I’d wanted to see her. “Mrs. Lang, did you ask your friend Ella Mae about our house?”
“Oh, yes, I forgot to tell you! Ella Mae said that there was a family who lived there, a girl and a boy, back in the thirties and forties, before it became a place for vacationers.”
I nodded.
“And when I told her you thought the house was haunted, she said she didn’t know why that would be. She never heard of anything unusual there. The family went through some tough stuff during the war, but most families did. The children grew up and moved away.”